Undinė Radzevičiūtė (born 1967) is the most un-Lithuanian of Lithuanian writers. She does not mix with the literary world, and on the cover of her first book she wrote a piece openly criticising the Lithuanian language and anything that has traditionally been considered of value of Lithuanian literature. However, she has much to offer for her iconoclastic antics. She was among the first to suggest a broader, more cosmopolitan definition of national identity, one that includes neighbouring nations, which over history have had much cultural and genetic influence, even though she does not really bother with definitions. Instead, she writes about things as they are: her language is peppered with foreign words and Russian swearwords. An expert at brevity and black humour, she does not even need to break free of the tradition of Lithuanian literature: she clearly never belonged there in the first place. The novel Žuvys ir drakonai (Fishes and Dragons) was published in German, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Spanish, Croatian. 

Grožio ir blogio biblioteka (The Library of Beauty and Evil). Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers’ Union Publishing House, 2020, – 200 pp. 

The main character – the owner of a grotesque collection of books – actually first appeared in a short story in Radzevičiūtė’s 2011 volume. Here, everything is developed: the collection, the story of its inheritance, the circumstances under which some of the books are acquired, and most importantly, the motivation. Walter Schultz was ready to die when he was in his 20s; he is essentially living overtime after that. This premise places the novel in an intertextual relationship with Dorian Grey, and the connection is further reinforced by the central question of how much evil can one do in the quest for beauty. Set in Berlin beginning with Weimar era and through most of the 20th century, the story is arranged mostly in a series of dialogues between Walter and his sister Lotta, attempting to explore the question. However, for Walter, it is not just theoretical.

Žuvys ir drakonai (Fishes and Dragons). Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2013, – 227 pp.

Radzevičiūtė’s fourth book steadily remains the favourite, even though she has written two more novels after this. The plot follows two stories. An 18th century Jesuit arrives in China, expecting to do missionary work. However, he feels more and more frustrated, as the Chinese culture, in his view, is like a sponge that absorbs everything but doesn’t change even a little itself. In the present day, in an unknown city a matriarchal family of grandmother, mother and two daughters, is spying on a Chinese restaurant out of their apartment window. While some have felt that the book is too disconnected, fragmented and difficult to put together into a whole, it still remains both an entertaining and a thoughtful read. The messy contact between different civilizations is obviously an important theme, but there’s more to the book than that: it is also a book about family and home, about vocation and freedom.

Selected translations

Latvian: Zivis un pūķi. Translated by Dace Meiere. Riga: Janis Roze Publishers, 2021

Croatian: Ribe i zmajevi. Translated by Mirjana Bračko. Zagreb: Ibis grafika, 2021

English: The Library of Beauty and Evil. Translated by Rimas Uzgiris. In: The Vilnius Review, 2020

Fishes and Dragons: excerpt from the novel. Translated by Ada Valaitis. In: The Vilnius Review, Vilnius, 2014 (33)

There will be no Baden Baden; Walter Schultz (short stories). Translated by Ada Valaitis. In: The Vilnius Review, Vilnius, 2011 (29)

German: Das Blut is Blau. Translated by Cornelius Hell. Salzburg-Wien: Residenz Verlag, 2019

Fische und Drachen. Translated by Cornelius Hell. Salzburg-Wien: Residenz Verlag, 2017

Spanish: Peces Y Dragones. Translated by Margarita Santos Cuesta. Fulgencio Pimentel, 2019

Latvian: Asinis zilas, debesis pelēkas. Translated by Dace Meiere. Riga: Janis Roze Publishers, 2019

Bulgarian: Риби и дракони. Translated by Antonija Penčeva. Sofia: Panorama,  2019

Hungarian: Halak és sárkányok. Translated by Aranka Laczházi. Budapest: Typotex Publishing, 2018

Estonian: Ei mingit Baden – Badenit. Translated by Tiiu Sandrak. Tallinn: Loomingu raamatukogu, 2-3, 2014